Russian policeman gets life for killings

A Russian police major who shot two people dead and wounded seven others in a supermarket rampage that stoked public outrage over police brutality was sentenced on Friday to life in prison.

Denis Yevsyukov, the former head of police of the southern Moscow district of Tsaritsyno, was found guilty on two counts of murder and 22 counts of attempted murder, prosecutors said. “The court found Denis Yevsyukov guilty of these crimes and sentenced him to life in prison in a maximum-security prison colony,” the Prosecutor General’s Office said in a statement.

The life term imposed by a three-judge panel at Moscow City Court was the maximum sentence Yevsyukov could be given for his April 2009 shooting spree, which sparked calls to reform Russia’s notoriously corrupt and brutal police.

Judge Nikolai Fomin said Yevsyukov was to be stripped of his rank as police major and called him “an extraordinary danger to society,” the ITAR-TASS news agency reported from the courtroom.

The high-profile verdict came a day after President Dmitry Medvedev ordered sweeping reforms to Russia’s powerful interior ministry and outlined broad reforms to combat police corruption.